[SllX]

> There needs to be public funding of elections. That would go a long way.

I’m going to push back on this.

Not a single dollar of public money should be spent helping anyone at all acquire a seat in an office of power. This includes running primaries through State election apparatuses and laws governing primary selection processes.

I’d be okay with zeroing out contributions to individual candidates and limiting political contributions exclusively to political parties to dole out to their members as they see fit, even if that required a constitutional amendment, but not with public money. You’re effectively subsidizing the acquisition of power by interested parties with taxpayer money, while simultaneously cementing an additional incumbent advantage for those already seated and able to write the rules for the public funding of elections.

[kelseyfrog]

I'm going to push back on this pushback. Not a single dollar of private money should be spent on helping anyone acquire a seat of power. Dollars represent disproportional ability to influence who has power.

We already have a fair mechanism to signal - voting. Attempts to nudge candidates ability to win are antithetical to our value of egalitarianism. If we're willing to let dollars donated swing a politicians chances, we've already lost. Let's just close up shop and vote with dollars like we shop for shoes. It's a mockery of decency.

[zajio1am]

Voting is just passive a passive part of politics, but there is active part of politics, like political activism, and that is as important as voting.

People that are good at public relations and communications can directly do political activism, while people bad at that and good at something else can use money generated from what they are good at to hire or support someone to do political activism for them.

So forbidding money in political activism is just gatekeeping political activism to people good at public relations.

[SllX]

> Dollars represent disproportional ability to influence who has power.

People with a lot of money already possess both, which is why I am perfectly content with people who have money to spend their own money.

> Attempts to nudge candidates ability to win are antithetical to our value of egalitarianism.

In that case, would you also support prohibiting people from spending their private time or using their public speech to influence election outcomes? No more volunteers, only paid workers funded by the State?

The influence of dollars alone on the outcome of an election is already overvalued. Michael Bloomberg already engaged in the grandest experiment to prove that money really can’t buy political office and depending on your point of view here, either succeeded fantastically in that goal or failed miserably in his own goal in what was fundamentally an own goal.

It’s also utterly naïve to think that by attempting to resource constrain elections by funneling money through the State to redistribute to campaigns that you will succeed in capping the real economy around election campaigns and prevent the State from giving the ultimate incumbent advantage and using its own official functions to influence the outcome of elections. More than likely you would just be hiding most of the activity around a campaign inside the State itself.

The game doesn’t change just because you’re spending public or private money: your goal is to get people to fill out their ballots and submit them in your favor. What changes is whether it is private individuals, from small dollar donors to billionaires deciding how to spend their money (as is their right in all areas of life!) or the State deciding how they are going to spend other peoples money for them, which you know, speaking of, that is a mockery of decency.

> Let's just close up shop and vote with dollars like we shop for shoes.

So let’s not and say we didn’t. The cost of converting dollars into real votes is high and plateaus. The actual spending is an entire economy supporting the salaries of campaign staff and paying contractors and advertising firms which I am okay with. I’m even okay with putting additional constraints on who can raise money and in the case of local elections, Senate and House seats, from where locking out foreigners and interstate donations entirely changing the shape of that entire economy (provided an appropriate Constitutional amendment is agreed upon and passed), but not one red cent should be coming from a local, State or the Federal Treasury. That’s money to support the functions of the State and the excess should go back to its rightful owners instead.

[maxerickson]

There probably shouldn't be privileged ballot access where well established organizations have a lower bar than a newcomer.

[SllX]

Outsiders like Donald Trump in 2016 and Bernie Sanders on multiple occasions also shouldn’t be able to come in an effectively (in the case of Trump) or nearly take over an existing political machine and transform it in their image at the low low cost of changing their party registration on a form with their home state.

You can do it too! In the State of California where yours truly is domiciled, changing your party registration is easier than changing your underwear so if there’s a particular party whose primary you want to vote in for whatever reason, that’s a thing you can just do with absolutely no cost to you whatsoever. You don’t need any buy-in. If political parties are going to be a thing, and we’ve accepted that they’re just going to be a thing for over 200 years and counting, then there needs to be some buy-in for people running under their banner and proportionate institutional influence from the leaders and rank-and-file of the organization flying that banner. Given freedom of association is a thing, parties are not going to go away no matter what you try and do to constrain them, so I’m okay with them also being a focal point around which people qualify for the ballot and secure donations and staffed time to run for office since that is what they are there for.

Real party turnover used to be higher. Parties would either fall out of favor and die and be replaced, or they would face credible risks from smaller parties and work to absorb them into their ranks by taking in the issues that energized them. Right now they’re functionally just an identity group, and that makes them both fragile and dangerous since their name still means something to voters, but their party functions do not command the premium they used to.

[maxerickson]

I don't care about what the organizations decide to do, that's their private business. The states shouldn't be offering them the ability to put up a candidate using a separate mechanism.

So for instance, in that scenario, the backup strategy is for there to be several candidates aligned with the organization that seek ballot access, and then the organization can endorse one of them to try to concentrate votes. Versus the situation now where the organization can name their candidate later in the process and ensure that votes are concentrated.

This would of course make things worse for 2024 Harris, but probably not to the extent that they would have for 2016 Trump.

[SllX]

Just so I understand because I think I might be misunderstanding you, are you against the States executing primaries on behalf of the parties, or are you against the parties gating candidates from also being on the general ticket under their name, or both?

[maxerickson]

There shouldn't be ballot access for a party nominee. I would be fine with the party endorsement of a given candidate still appearing on the ballot.

It's not a gate, it's privileged access, where organizations that pass some rule play by different rules than other candidates.

[SllX]

Ah, no, I get it now and I get the sentiment but I think this is better a case where we actually lean into the party system that has developed rather than running away from it, in no small part because it isn’t going away. I still don’t think the States should be executing party primaries or running the party registration process, but I do live in a a locality with numerous officially non-partisan offices with elections that are exactly what you describe and it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I would describe it as basically a charade.

[gottorf]

> You’re effectively subsidizing the acquisition of power by interested parties with taxpayer money, while simultaneously cementing an additional incumbent advantage for those already seated and able to write the rules for the public funding of elections.

This is a very good point. And if we can generalize: it's very difficult to regulate something in a way that does not eventually advantage those already inside over those on the outside looking to come in; industry regulations, rent control, minimum wage, etc.